Dirt and Ash
by Blackleatherjacketz
Summary: Daryl runs into a mysterious woman after what happens to Rick, and he can't help but follow her.
1. Chapter 1

The air was thick, blanketing her skin in a sticky sweat as she studied the deer that stood silent among the trees. The animal was majestic, bending its head down toward the creek as it's ears flicked a fly off its fur before moving back to their natural position. It paused, listening for potential predators as it drank from the slowly flowing body of water.

Its spotted back reminded her of the fur James had worn in the cold winter months, holed up in his cabin with her sipping tea by the fire. If he were here with her now, he would tell her to breathe, to see the deer for what it really was… a sacrifice, a blessing.

She blinked and took in a deep breath, praying to the earth and river as she aimed her arrow at the young fawn. "Forgive me, for I must take this life to save my own." She chanted in her head as she pulled the arrow back against her string.

CRUNCH, CRUNCH, CRUNCH...

The deer looked up, quickly flicking its ears again before hopping away and disappearing into the brush. It was gone. She released the pressure on her bow, deflated at the thought of another night without a meal.

"Damnit," she whispered, letting go of her breath and arrow.

This would be the third night in a row she would have to live off the thin supply of military meals she found on road the other day. James was a much more skilled hunter than she was, but she had been doing well enough on her own until now. Until this.

In the old world, something like this would have thrown her off, would have caused her to lose her cool. But this was the new world, and she couldn't afford to do that. Instead she crouched down behind her tree, looking in the direction of the footsteps as they continued to get louder. Could there be a walker out this far? Was there a new group of survivors making their way through this area?

She mimicked the deer and perked up her ears as much as she could. Quick and purposeful, with no dragging in between them, the footsteps sounded like they belonged to a living human. A living human! She hadn't seen one of those in months! She held her breath again as she waited for them to approach, stalling her excitement to see if they belonged to anyone useful.

The man's shoes were covered in mud, tarnishing what might have been shiny black leather at some point before all of this. His pants were tattered and torn, baring knees dried with blood holding the scattered fibers of fabric together. He took his time trailing through the brush as his eyes remained trained on the fleeting animal.

"Damn," he whispered under his breath, lowering his weapon. He sighed and turned in place as if to look for any other animals before stopping just in front of her.

She crouched down in her spot, using the foliage next to the tree as a shield against this burly stranger. Was he looking at her? Was he looking past her? Was there something behind her that she should be worried about? Was HE something to be worried about? She contemplated turning her head to look, but any movement might give her position away if she hadn't already done so. She stared at him as he walked toward her, his sharp features defining a trustworthy face as he tilted his head from side to side.

"C'm on." He coaxed her, raising his crossbow in front of him. "I can see you." He kept his eyes on her and periodically surveyed the landscape, keeping his bow pointed at her head. His eyes were cool and deep, filled with secrets she could only begin to decipher from the pain that hid so close behind them. He was cautious, afraid, and untrusting. In a world like this, she couldn't exactly blame him.

"It's just me," she offered, barely recognizing the sound of her own voice.

She had been hunting in these woods with James for years, and silently by herself for only a few short months. In all that time, she had never been lazy enough to get tracked by someone. What was happening to her? Was she losing her touch? Was she forgetting James' teachings already? Was she subconsciously trying to get tracked by someone… anyone... that was looking?

"Prove it." He held his weapon with strong arms, retreating a little as he beckoned for her to come out from behind the tree.

She stood up slowly, sensing he had come across some off-kilter people before he had run into her clearing. Maybe those people had caused the sadness in his eyes he was trying to cover up, or maybe he was one of those off-kilter people. Either way, she knew that there was only one way to find out.

She held her bow and arrow out separately in each hand, keeping a stream of eye contact as she set them both down at her feet.

"What's on yer face?" He lifted his bow higher, kicking her weapons away from her.

Her face? What was he talking about? Oh yeah, she'd almost forgotten. She'd almost forgotten that she'd painted her eyes and cheeks with mud before she went hunting that day.

"Just dirt and ash," she spun around slowly and tossed her knife onto the ground, hoping it would get him to drop the bow.

"How many walkers have you killed?" He bent down and took her knife, quickly aiming back at her as he shoved the blade in the back of his pants.

"Forty," she confessed, keeping her hands up in surrender.

"How many people have you killed?" His grip on his weapon tightened.

"Ten."

"Why?" he snarled.

"I had to." She took in a deep breath at the memory she couldn't get out of her head. The images of those men attacking her and James were too vivid for her to bury, too loud for her to ignore. "They were going to kill me," she confessed.

He held her fast with his weapon, his arrow pulled tight against the string as he judged the answers she gave him. His breath was slow and steady, like the breeze in the trees above them as he exhaled slowly. He looked down at her weapons given freely, then back up at her face before dropping the bow to his side.

"You got a camp?" He looked around the clearing as he slung his crossbow onto his back.

"Are you one of them? The Saviors?" She retreated back into the tree, her naked shoulder blades brushing against the aged bark.

"Nah." He pulled her knife out of his pants and handed it to her. "They're gone."

"Gone?" The word echoed in the forest, bouncing gently off the tree bark. She couldn't believe that such a powerful force had been removed from this earth, especially when they had so recently taken everything from her. "How do you know?"

"I just know." He swallowed hard as the rest of the story brewed in his chest, threatening to spill out of his lips as he kept his distance from her. "That why you're out here? Why you paint your face?" He picked up her weapons and examined them carefully, noticing skillful knife marks in the woodwork. She had either done this for a living before all of this or had perfected the skill out here to stay alive. "So they won't see you?"

He handed the weapons back to her.

"They saw me anyways." She volunteered, gripping her bow and arrow tightly before placing them on her shoulder. "Just like that deer saw you earlier," she scolded.

She pointed in the direction of the deer's path, noticing the bent leaves and displaced mud before shooting him an accusatory look. "I hope you're good with that crossbow, because now you owe me dinner."


	2. Chapter 2

The deer had sped up too far ahead of them, their 'getting to know you' session wasting too much precious time to catch up to their prey. The tracks had mixed in with something else's, something bigger and slower that had confused them into frustration. Maybe the heat was getting to them, or maybe it was the hunger pangs that pulled at their insides as they forced a few more lazy steps.

She stopped walking and placed her hands on her hips, sighing in defeat as she glanced up at the sun. It was lower in the sky now, signaling four in the afternoon as her lack of options weighed heavily on her shoulders. Was this new stranger just going to slow her down? Distract her? Lead her back to the Saviors? Was this all just an elaborate trap? Trap! She'd forgotten about the traps she had set earlier this morning!

She took off in the direction of her last hope for sustenance as the man grumbled behind her, keeping up with her pace quite easily. His legs were strong as they pumped his torso forward, his crossbow riding across his shoulders like a man on a horse with each stride. His face was serious, devoid of fear as he watched where she was going, each step she took like a line on a map. He followed her lead as she slowed her pace near the foot of the mountain, stopping in front of a set of trees with symbols she'd carved in them weeks ago.

She trotted to a stop as she reached her traps only to find them as empty as she had left them.

"Damn," she sighed again, placing her palm on her forehead to cool herself down. She thought even though she'd lost the deer, she would have at least caught something in one of her traps.

"Try puttin' some camo over your traps," he offered, his chest heaving rapidly. "Get more critters that way."

"Yeah, I did." She walked over to the empty cage and groaned in defeat. "Looks like the wind had a mind of its own today."

He shrugged his shoulders.

She bent down and let her eyes travel over to him, re-evaluating each cut and bruise, each scrape and tear on his clothes as it mixed in with the dirt and blood that painted his skin a dark tan. This new stranger looked like he knew how to take care of himself, like he knew the woods and the earth; but appearances could be deceiving, even in the apocalypse.

If he was a Savior, though, he would have been a little bit cleaner, a little more... kept than this man was. Most of the men she encountered from that camp had haircuts, shaved faces, and moderately clean clothes. They had guns and bats instead of crossbows covered in mud. Nothing about this man before her made her feel uneasy or set off any alarms. She felt safe with him, for some odd reason.

"How long you been out here like this?" He walked over to her, picking up the empty remains of the trap before handing it back to her.

"Months," she thought out loud, wondering if that was even true. "Maybe longer, I can't really be sure." She took the trap from him and turned it over in her hands, observing it gently before resetting it and put it down amidst the fallen leaves.

"After the Saviors came," she paused and kept her eyes on the wooden trap, caressing the outline of her handiwork as if it were near and dear to her. "After what they took," she sighed and placed some grass and dirt over the trap, hoping to disguise it from the rabbits and squirrels she was trying to catch. "I couldn't stay there anymore."

"What'd they take?" He looked away from her after his words hit the air, afraid of what her answer might be. He pulled the knife out of his belt and started carving aimlessly into the tree bark in front of him, wishing he could take the question back into his lungs.

"What they always do," she followed suit and looked away, staring at her hands. She sighed at the painful memory and patted her hands together to rid them of the excess dirt. "Half of everything."

She closed her eyes and envisioned the sights and smells of her old home; the smoke from the wood burning stove, the lavender tea that James always made in that dull black kettle and the smooth dark sound of his voice. She let it lull her into a bittersweet lullaby as memories of him replaced this lonely and barren place, almost making her forget how hungry she actually was.

"Yeah," he broke the silence of her thoughts, pulling his knife out of the tree with a grunt. "They do that."

"What'd they take from you?" She stood up and walked toward him, cautiously approaching with her dangerous question. She watched as the cogs in his brain began to turn, clicking one into the other as he weighed the pros and cons of telling her anything too serious.

He opened his mouth to speak but the sound of snarling in the distance immediately cut him off. High-pitched breaths mixed with low grumbly growls made him aim, shoot and kill quicker than she could even turn her head. His aim was fast and true, landing directly in the walker's eye as it came out the back of its head.

All questions about the Saviors left her mind as she turned on her heel, pulling her knife out of its sheath as she ran toward the group of the undead. Pulling the man's arrow out of the walker's head, she tossed it back to him, shaking the blood and brain matter off her hand with a flick of her wrist. She was pretty sure he only had a few arrows mounted on his weapon, and that he'd need every last one of them.

She grabbed the nearest walker by the scalp and rammed her knife through the top of its skull, its final breath rushing out through its teeth like rancid notes from an untuned organ. She held her breath as dust and blood filled the air before she jiggled her blade free from the monster, watching it collapse at her feet.

Another arrow whirred by her, the momentum of it blowing her hair away from her face as it planted itself firmly between a walker's eyes. This guy was good. She glanced back as he advanced on the group beside her, taking down one, two, three in a matter of seconds as she continued to take down the closer ones with her knife.

There had to have been a community that had gotten loose after its demise, small enough for them to handle, but big enough to catch them off guard. Were they the rest of the Saviors? Were these random survivors that had starved to death out here in the forest? It was impossible to say, but she at least welcomed the help in taking them out.

"Thanks," she whispered.

"Yup," he walked over to the lifeless bodies and collected the rest of his arrows.

"Haven't seen a group that big in a while," she started, wiping the blood from her knife onto her pants. "It's usually just one or two at a time out here." She looked around for any other moving targets and let go of her breath as the coast proved to be clear. "Maybe it's time to move on." She stepped over the corpses and started walking toward the foot of the mountain.

"Move on?" He followed her, without rhyme or reason other than his feet were moving in the same direction she was.

"I'll stay here a few more nights, maybe, but it looks like I've caught everything I can." She touched a tree with similar markings as the one before, following her own trail of breadcrumbs back to where she needed to be.

"What about that deer? Could last you a grip." He loaded another arrow into his crossbow, looking for anything scurrying around their feet that could pass as a meal.

"I'll try again tomorrow," she told him, starting a climb up the incline of the mountainside.

"Walkers could get 'er." He leaned forward to brace himself for the change in resistance as they climbed, noticing another one of her marked trees.

"Walker's could get us too, but so could hunger." She fingered the symbol briefly before walking past it, heading up a little farther. Her pace remained steady, making sure the man wasn't too far behind before she turned around another tree or climbed up any higher. She could feel the sun cool down as it changed from a golden yellow to a blood orange while it bathed them in color through the trees. If they didn't seek refuge soon, who knows what else they could run into.

"There's some food up here a ways." She glanced back at him to make sure he was still with her, motioning for him to stay close as she turned down a set of hidden stairs; rocks cut wildly into the mountainside by what she had presumed to be waterfall at one point.

"You make all these markings yourself?" He took his time down the rocks before pointing back at one of her trees.

"It's easy to get lost in these woods." She touched the marking on her last tree before coming up on a cave surrounded by wild vines. "Is that why you're still with me, stranger? You lost?"

"Name's Daryl, and I've got nowhere to be." He relaxed his grip on the crossbow and looked up at the cave in awe, slinging his strap over his shoulder. "Not anymore."


	3. Chapter 3

Moonlight. He had never really paid much attention to it until tonight, until this very moment as it crept in through the vines that guarded the entryway to the cave. He watched as it swayed slowly, casting the rocky refuge in a bluish calming hue as the plants mimicked the movement of seaweed in the deepest parts of the ocean. Drops of water echoed loudly in his aching ears as they hit the ancient floor of his temporary shelter.

He wasn't exactly sure how he ended up here, why he followed this person through the forest and up the mountain, but here he was. The forest seemed to be the only place left to escape the pain that lay so heavily on his heart, the only place left to think about something different, something new. He couldn't look at Michonne without thinking about Rick, Judith without Carl, or Maggie without Beth, Hershel and Glenn. Every loss over the years had taken their toll, but this… this just might be the last straw.

"Here," she drew him back to the present, her black eyes forcing him to stare. She handed him a piece of bread, an over-processed wheat square that she'd broken in half to share with him. "Eat," she whispered, showing him the other half as she took a bite.

He took the cardboard bread from her, grunting in gratitude as he glanced at her face. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, noticing the mud on her eyes as it dried and cracked, falling onto high cheekbones that sunk in just enough to tell the tale of her struggle. Black hair fell past her shoulders tied with feather and bone, braided at the top to keep it out of her eyes.

She was unlike anyone he had ever seen before; strange but familiar, ancient yet new. When he looked at her he forgot about the guilt he carried with him, the burden of leadership and the uncertainty of tomorrow. All that mattered with her was survival, and that's all he felt he had room for anymore.

He took a bite of the bread, noticing a slight sweetness to it as he slowly chewed it up. "So what, you Cherokee or something?" He'd met plenty of hunters out there in the forest, but none quite like her.

She smiled for the first time, taking a bite of her bread before sitting down next to him. "Or something." She chewed her food and looked him over. "What are you, some kind of Discovery Channel bike mechanic?"

"Ha ha, very funny," he replied dryly. He couldn't imagine someone like her having a life before all this, let alone sitting down on a couch in front of a TV. "I just kinda thought this cave was gonna be filled with all of yer people waiting to ambush me."

"Well, I hate to disappoint you, Daryl, but it really is just me." She sighed at the realization of her loneliness again, thinking about how much James would have loved this cave. "I'm Angeni, by the way."

"Angeni?" He furrowed his brow, even though he'd already met people with names as crazy as Negan and Saddiq.

"You can call me Angie if it's easier. James said it meant 'spirit', that I was always a spirited child."

"You call your dad by his first name?"

"He wasn't my father, exactly." She took in a deep breath. "More like a mentor in all of this. He taught me how to hunt, how to skin and cook, how to treat wounds with plants, how to make things." She pointed around the room at various dishes and utensils; a backpack made of deerskin and several furs on the ground.

"Yeah, my mentor's gone, too." He looked at his feet, wondering if Rick would be upset with him now that he left their people behind. The hilltop had Maggie, Alexandria had Michonne; they didn't need him anymore. Not like this, anyways.

"Is that why you followed me up here?" She rose an eyebrow.

"I guess." He shrugged his shoulders, looking down at his hands as he picked at his fingernails. It wasn't just the loss of Rick that drew him to someone new, to her in particular. She could take care of herself, and that constant worry of when she was going to die, how she was going to die, never even crossed his mind. She had been doing just fine without him up until now, and that was the most comforting feeling.

He glanced over at her, wondering what her reason was for taking him in. "Why didn't you shoot me on sight?"

She smiled. "I needed help getting that deer," she lied, patting him on the shoulder.

He smiled back, as much as he could in his current state, and let her keep her hand on his shoulder. He didn't pull away or brush her off. Instead he let the feeling of her hand warm up the sore muscles in his back that carried his crossbow all day. He let himself pause and slow down, to feel the emptiness that lay inside both of them as they sat there together mourning their teachers.

"Yeah," he whispered, pushing himself up off the bench. He sniffed up some tears that threatened to break free before bending down and grabbing his crossbow. He looked it over, inspecting each of his arrows before stopping in front of the entrance. "I'll take first watch."

"You don't need to do that up here, we're so far up…" she started.

He pointed his bow outside. "I'll take first watch."


	4. Chapter 4

The cave was still cool when she woke up, the early morning haze surrounding her in a moist fog as she stretched out her arms. The void of a missing person plagued her mind as she rubbed her eyes, searching for someone she wasn't even sure was there to begin with: Damon, David, Daniel…? Daryl! She sat up and looked around toward the mossy entrance, dim light painting the mouth of the cave a gray octagon with no outline of Daryl. Maybe he was just a dream, after all.

She shrugged off the thought, pleasant enough as it was. Another hunter to keep her company, to make sure she wasn't losing her mind in all of this solitude up in the mountain would have been nice. She sighed and gathered up her bow and arrow, getting ready for her day and the descent down the mountainside.

"You were right," a gruff southern accent echoed against the rocky walls. "Didn't see a walker all night."

She looked up from her hunting tools, aghast that the fading memory she had so quickly dismissed was an actual person and not a mirage. He had been there, broken bread with her and still chosen to stay. She couldn't help but smile as she looked him over, remembering every detail about his appearance.

"I thought you'd gone," she muttered, trying not to sound affected as she slung her quiver over her shoulder.

"Pfft," he waved her off, giving her the impression that the idea was absolute madness. "I kept watch most the night." He ran his hand along the wall of the cave, shaking the moisture off his hand.

"You didn't wake me," she stated.

"I slept here and there." He shrugged and shook the last few droplets off his fingertips, pointing out to the forest. "We should go into town and get some stuff for a perimeter, maybe check those traps."

"You've done that before?" She gripped her bow tightly. "A perimeter?"

"You haven't?" He turned and started walking down the mountain, glancing back only to make sure she was close behind. "Just enough stuff to make some noise if anything runs across the line. Doesn't have to be anything fancy."

"You did this at your old camp?" she prodded, stepping into his muddy footprints.

"Yeah." He leaned back with the angle of the mountain, taking slower and heavier strides as he touched her markings on the trees as they passed. "We kept movin'" he started, swinging his arms back and forth as he walked. "Every place we stopped, we thought we were safe. We used perimeters in b'tween."

"Were you safe at your last camp?" She leaned back too, grabbing those tree branches as she followed the hunter closely.

"Kinda," he offered, reaching his arm back to grab the crossbow off his back. "After a while we were… but not at first." He brought the weapon up to his face, searching for any immediate threat as they continued into the forest.

"Saviors?" She wanted to know what caused all that pain he carried with him, but couldn't tell if he was ready to tell her just yet.

Silence.

Maybe if she told him what happened to her, the horrors she had to endure, he might be more inclined to open up to her in return. It may have been a while since she had interacted with someone besides James, but she remembered feeling safe when someone else showed their vulnerable side. She took in a deep breath and decided to give it a shot.

"James always warned me against letting people in when we were together. He said what had happened to the world brought out the worst in people, that they would panic and try to take what we had." She straightened her posture as the ground leveled out near the foot of the mountain. "He said that history would repeat itself, and people would turn into savages." She paused. "I kind of thought he was just ranting and raving until the Saviors came."

Daryl grabbed the last tree with her mark aggressively carved into it, giving her a look to let her know that he was listening.

"James was out hunting that afternoon, but... he wasn't far off when they pulled up with their trucks and guns." She swallowed hard as the memories took over again, wrenching her insides together as she did her best to navigate her path. "We had a cabin in the woods, something completely off the grid that no one knew about but us even before the outbreak… but they eventually found it. James had been living off the land for years. People would call him the crazy old medicine man, Squanto, Chief, Tonto, you name it, but he didn't care. He liked it out there all by himself, loved it even. I'd only just remembered it when the outbreak happened, and he was kind enough to take me in."

She stepped in front of him, leading the way to find a rabbit squirming nearby in her trap. It was big enough to provide a decent meal for both of them as it shivered in fear inside the cage. It had no idea it was about to die for them, to give them the strength they needed, but they had gone long enough without a meal to let it go.

"There was a man named Simon… but then he said he was also Kegan…?" She closed her eyes and tilted her head to remember.

"Negan," Daryl whispered, an angry growl hidden in his throat.

"Yeah, that sounds right." She opened her eyes and pulled her knife out of its sheath, unlatching the trap and grabbing the rabbit by the scruff of its neck. "They were trying to tie my hands together when one of them said that Negan had never fucked an Injun girl before, and that I should get in the car and go back with them."

She bent down and whispered a prayer over the rabbit's soul, shh-ing it as it struggled against her grip. She closed her eyes again as she slit its throat, ignoring the final desperate kicks its legs pounded into the ground.

"He had snuck up from behind, killing most of them, silently, one by one before he got to the man in front of me. Only he missed one that was hiding behind the car, and they shot him." She opened her eyes. "Right in the head, they shot him… right in front of me!" She squeezed the life out of the rabbit, it's blood squirting violently between her fingers and into the dirt as her story progressed.

"I was too late to save James, to stop Simon from driving away, but I grabbed that man's gun and just kept shooting until there was no one left." Her eyes welled up with tears as the image of his head exploding replayed in her mind like an old movie stuck on a projector. She could feel the shards of bone scatter across her face again as if he were trying to reach out to her one last time. She knew that she told Daryl she had been out here for months, but the truth is she'd lost all track of time and purpose without James. It could have been years since that incident, and she wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.

"Hey." Rough calloused fingers made their way over the hills and valleys of her knuckles, coating themselves in blood as they held her shaking hands. "Hey," he whispered again, squeezing her digits gently.

The sudden sensation of being touched by another human led her eyes to his, bringing their blueish gray to her attention for the very first time. Years of torture and understanding washed over her with a single glance as his monstrous arms grasped her trembling figure. He held onto her until the blood ran out, the scarlet liquid dripping off both their hands before he loosened her grip on the animal like a police officer disarming a suspect.

"It's okay," he nodded, taking the rabbit and placing it on the ground. "It's over." He took her hands in his, holding them together as they quaked, and the blood started to coagulate between their fingers. "Least now we know yer traps work."


	5. Chapter 5

Daryl knew that The Saviors had covered a lot of territory in their day but didn't think of all the small groups they tried to recruit in the past. What Angeni had been through was awful, but it wasn't any different, or any worse than what he'd experienced with them. He wanted to tell her everything, about the torture and his escape, about Dwight and Carl and Negan, but he also didn't want to end up shaking in a clearing with a dead rabbit in his hands.

"So how far's this cabin?" he asked as they raided an old Piggly Wiggly.

"A few days' walk." She grabbed a can of sweet potatoes and checked the expiration date, putting it in her pack anyways. "It might be shorter now that I'm more… alert." She walked up and down another aisle, passing up a can of bug spray.

"You make a lot of stops along the way? Any landmarks?" He grabbed a can of black beans and walked over to her, putting the can gently in her pack.

"No, not along the way. But there was a stream right by the cabin. That's why James built it there in the first place." She smiled at him and closed the flap on her pack.

"Yer sayin' you had fresh water there and you still left?" He squinted his eyes at her, unable to comprehend how she left such a resourceful residence behind.

"I had to get out of there. Simon could have told the rest of them about the stream, about our crops. I wasn't thinking about anything else but surviving, so I ran until I found that cave." She fingered a tube of grape chapstick, staring at it so she didn't have to face Daryl's accusatory glare.

"Nah, I get it," he whispered, walking past her to another aisle. "But that cave's gonna get real cold come winter." He ran his hand along the top shelf, hoping to find something useful he may have missed with his eyes.

"I've kept plenty warm before." She paused and realized that he wasn't so much concerned with her warmth as he was his own. "I guess James had some winter clothes that could fit you. They might be a little tight in the arms, but they should work."

"Better than freezing to death up there in that mountain." He took his hand off the shelf and looked around the rest of the aisle, searching for anything else they could use.

"Fine," he heard her say, slowly following him to the end of the aisle. "I'll take you there, but I'm not staying." She crossed her arms over her chest. "And you're going to have to give me some proof that The Saviors are dead because I can't keep going on all this blind faith here."

"Proof?" He furrowed his brow, turning to face her.

"You're going to have to give me something more than cryptic answers and a growl here and there." She stepped even closer.

"What do you want, a red scarf and a baseball bat?" He leaned in so close he could see the flecks of dust that landed on her lashes when they entered the store.

"Something! I mean, you seem like a good man, and I feel like I can trust you, but you obviously don't trust me enough to tell me anything. If I take you to my home, I just want to make sure that I can…"

"They tortured me, okay?!" He yelled in her face, knowing full well it wasn't the right move, but it was the only way to get her to stop talking. "Put me in a box!" He threw his arm up in the air. "Shot me, starved me then gave me dog food like I wouldn't fuckin' notice!" He kicked the bottom counter with his last word, making sure not to touch her. "Is that what you wanted to hear?!"

He stopped when he saw her back away from him, recognizing that look on her face. It was the same look he had as a child when his father would go off the rails on him and Merle. Fear mixed with the anticipation of what would come next: a blow to the head or a punch in the gut. He didn't think he would be the one to cause that look in anyone else, yet here he was, scaring this woman who had done nothing but help him since the very beginning.

He took a step back, agreeing with her decision to put some distance between them as he slowed his breathing.

"Negan…" he continued, trying to think of the right words to describe what he'd been through. "Negan beat my friends' heads in with a baseball bat and laughed like it was all some kinda joke." He paused and took a deep breath, watching the fear in her face slowly turn to compassion.

"He took me, treated me like an animal, paraded me around my village like I was his own personal property." He turned around and faced the empty freezer section, grabbing a bag of pretzels off the rack he knew had to be stale at this point.

Silence.

"How'd you get out of it?" she finally asked, her voice closer now, gentle as he kept his back to her.

"Somebody inside helped me… somebody I helped before." He opened the bag of pretzels, hoping it would distract him from the feelings he never really had to explain to anyone else until now. Everyone he'd met had already seen what they did to him or knew for a fact what he'd been through. This whole explanation process was uncomfortable, and he'd rather be doing anything else right now than telling her about his trauma.

He sighed heavily before tossing a stale pretzel into his mouth, slowly turning around to see her face as calm as her voice. She wasn't scared or worried anymore, those expressions wiped clean from her painted features. Instead she expressed what looked to be pity and understanding; looks he'd only ever seen on the faces of Carol and Beth. Her ancient figure stood in this modern grocery store like an angel out of time, not backing away from him any longer.

Daryl swallowed his pretzel and took a few steps toward the front of the store, hoping his explanation was enough, but met resistance. Her hand, as little as it was, had stopped him dead in the chest.

"I'd be worried if you weren't angry," she started. "If you weren't kicking and screaming." She grabbed the cloth of his t-shirt and vest, crumpling them up together in her palm before bringing him in front of her. She searched his eyes as he tried to avoid her; looking up, down, and side to side before finally giving in.

He looked at her through greasy brown locks, his eyes wet and red as they told her the rest of his story. He'd never met anyone that held him accountable right away like this, that didn't let him storm off like he wanted to after his feelings got to heavy to carry.

"But anger makes us stupid, and we can't afford that out here," she continued.

He nodded as his lips began to quiver, remembering all the times his anger had gotten the best of him… with Beth after the prison, with Glenn and Negan, and the truck at The Sanctuary. He knew that she was right, and for some reason he felt safe and understood enough to let go. He leaned into her, resting his forehead against hers as he kept the eye contact he was always so used to avoiding.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, her breath blowing his hair out of his face. "For what they did to you." She let go of her grip on his shirt and slid her hand up his neck, reinforcing their bond. "For what they did to us." She pressed her forehead deeper against his, the two of them like slowly battling rams as her fingers ran through his wild and unkempt hair.

He let her touch him, stroke him, remind him of what it felt like to be human again; what they were all essentially fighting for. He dropped the bag of pretzels and brought his hands up to her arms, keeping himself steady as a tear finally fell to the floor.

"We put what happened behind us." She said, wiping his tear away with her thumb. "It stays here in the store and doesn't follow us."

He sniffed and nodded, squeezing her arms tenderly as he continued to hold her close before the long walk to the cabin.


	6. Chapter 6

Angeni paid careful attention to Daryl's body language as he followed her through the painful backwards memories toward her old home. It wasn't long before she learned the sounds he made when he was tired, the look of disappointment that furrowed his brow, or the grimace that meant he was hungry. In turn she taught him the hand signals James had used over the years when he wanted her to stop, come, and go. They went on like that together for days, speaking a silent language all their own until they finally reached the outskirts of her cabin.

Daryl stopped as they approached a perimeter of walkers, all scattered at even points around the building in front of them. They were moving, but they were still; stuck in the ground as they reached out from their fixed points in space and time. He glanced at her and grunted, raising his bow before taking two of them out so they could pass through the threshold unharmed.

"We made these traps one summer." She said as they passed by them, pointing to the holes she had dug in the ground a lifetime ago. "The spikes keep them in place long enough to get them in the morning, maybe longer." She shrugged her shoulders and chopped off one of the walker's feet, freeing it from the trap to make room for the next victim.

"Smart," Daryl looked down at the trap as she tossed the foot behind her, inspecting it as he stepped over the body.

"Yeah, he was. I can't take credit for everything," she grinned, glancing up at the cabin before an unsightly message stole the smile right off her face.

COME OUT AND FACE ME, INJUN BITCH!

It was written in black spray paint, messily in a handwriting Daryl knew to be Simon's. He had seen it on other places in the woods near Alexandria, and on the cabin Cyndie used to live in with her family. He knew he didn't have to tell Angeni who had written it but took a step back to give her time to process it anyway.

She pressed her lips together, the reality of the situation weighing heavily on her shoulders as she neglected the rest of the trapped walkers. Despite the vulgarity and danger of the message, it was clear to her that she made the right decision when she went into the forest that day. To think what would have happened if she had stayed, waiting up all night for Simon's inevitable return until he caught her off guard, weak and afraid.

She shook the thought from her mind and stood up from the walker trap, heading toward her home.

"Hey, we don't have to…" Daryl collected his arrows and put them back on his crossbow, slowly approaching her.

"It's okay," she whispered, timidly walking forward.

"It's not." He wiped his nose on the back of his arm and started walking, making sure to stay a few strides behind her.

She smiled and gripped her axe in one hand, twirling her knife in the other as she crouched down to approach the bullet-ridden structure. Creeping around the nearest window, she peeked in to notice that the cabinets had been completely demolished, a few pictures and chairs torn to shreds, but the wood-burning stove had at least been spared in the gunfire. Her mattress had been grazed by a few stray bullets, but it would do for the night if she decided to stay.

"See anythin'?" Daryl nearly snuck up on her, the string of his bow vibrating in the tense air as it waited to be released.

"No," she exhaled, relaxing the grip on her weapons. "It's clear."

She glanced over at him as he studied the doorway, looking around the perimeter as he took out a few more trapped walkers. He reloaded his bow one more time before pausing and holding his breath, raising and lowering his aim. She watched as he squinted his eyes as if to make sure what he was looking at was real, forcing her to look in the same direction.

A deer. No,THE deer. The very same deer that brought them together, the one with the white spots in the shape of Michigan was standing just beyond the outside of her perimeter. It was calm, beautiful and wildly unaware of the demise of the undead just a few yards in front of it.

Angeni held her breath as Daryl followed suit, holding it until he finally exhaled just before he fired his shot. The arrow whisked through the air, the vibrating hum of the string no longer sounding as it flung the pointed spear into the animal's head, barely making a thump as it hit the ground.

—

Daryl shrugged the carcass off his shoulders and onto a table out back. Despite how small a cabin James had made for them in the past, he sure seemed to utilize the space around them to the best of his ability. There was a type of awning made of cowhide and tree branches, complete with a wooden rack for tools and weapons next to the table he stood in front of. Most of the tools had been taken, of course, but a few arrows and knives were left behind.

"Put her on her back," Angeni instructed, grabbing a rope out of a bucket he didn't even notice.

Daryl usually started hanging his deer upside down and draining them of blood right after he shot them, but he was in Angeni's house now, and she seemed to know a thing or two that he didn't. He grunted and instantly did as she told him, straightening the deer out before stepping back to let her do her work.

He watched her pray over the animal, reciting words and songs in a whispered tone as she waved her palms over its head, chest and legs. Her hair fell down past her shoulders as she leaned over their prey, brushing against its fur as she closed her eyes and twisted the rope around its ankles. She tied a few knots into the rope, tugging on it to ensure its strength before letting go and grabbing her knife with both hands.

Daryl slung his bow down across his back as he watched her, waiting to help her hang the deer onto the tree as her voice got louder, her song sounding more like a chant. To his surprise, she shoved her knife into the animal's chest, ripping a jagged line in the flesh between its ribs as the blood spilled out the sides of her incision. Her knife struggled against the thick muscle of its chest, signaling just how long she had gone without eating a hearty meal.

Instead of hanging the deer up now as Daryl would have done, she reached her hands inside the animal, breaking ribs against her arms as she shoved their contents to the side. She dug deeper past the lungs and other organs as her braids and beads dipped into the scarlet lifeblood of the animal, dying her hair as she finally found what she was looking for.

A bright red heart stood before him, no longer beating but still bleeding out its last cycle of life before it ended completely. It was bigger than he thought, more time passing between his big kills than he'd care to admit. Those rabbits and squirrels of his past paled in comparison to this; this pound of flesh that lay silent in her hands as she lifted it up to eye level. Every vein and artery expanding and contracting, shrinking with each passing second as it dripped through her fingers and down her wrists while she presented it to him.

"It's your kill," she whispered up to him. "You drink." To her this was sacred, to her this was an honor, to her this was… a gift, and the least he could do was honor that.

Daryl took a step forward and nodded, apprehensively cupping her hands as he met her half way. He felt the warmth of the blood as it spilled into his palms, the steadiness of her fingers as she finally decided to let go, and the gravity of her eyes as she watched him bring the heart up to his mouth.

He stared at her, his eyes locking onto hers as if to be sure this was what she wanted him to do. He'd heard of this before, an old hunting tradition Native Americans performed when they made their first kill, but he always chalked it up to Merle just messing with him. He brushed it off as another joke, another stupid dare his brother tried to get him to do, but now it had an entirely new meaning.

He wasted no time in spilling the blood over his lips and onto his tongue, noting how different it tasted from the blood he'd shed in fist fights before. It wasn't nearly as salty, and certainly not as thin. No, this blood was hot, thick and rich with iron; delicious in its own way as it trickled down his throat and into his stomach, immediately perking him up.

"This deer is part of you now." She closed the gap between them, her face calm and somber. "As you drink, you become one with it, become whole as it gives you the gift of life and leaves this world behind." She took his hands in hers, wrapping her fingers around his knuckles as they slowly lowered the heart together.

Daryl swallowed a few more times, ensuring he took in enough blood to satisfy her ritual as the excess dripped down the sides of his chin. He let himself connect with her, vulnerably watching as her thumbs pressed in across his cheeks, smearing blood over his face well into his hairline.

"The Hunter," she called him, bending down and mixing dirt into her fingertips. She stood back up and rubbed her hands together, coating his eyes and forehead in nature as he rested his eyelids for the very first time.

He was so tired. Tired of being strong. Tired of being smart. Tired of fighting other people's fights. He was tired of being different, of being feared and misunderstood, of being the outlier that no one ever seemed to care or worry about.

He decided to let this moment settle in; a moment where he finally felt at peace, understood, even loved. He could feel her touching him, caressing him, caring for him, and made the conscious decision to push his face in against hers. He smeared the markings she'd adorned him with and painted her cheek a dark red as he held her face, pressing his lips into hers.

He'd never kissed anyone before, not intentionally anyways, except for a few drunken mishaps that almost always involved Merle and a whole bunch of goading. He wanted to save something like that for someone like her; someone who wasn't ashamed of who she was or how she lived… someone who was like him.

He squeezed the deer's heart in his other hand as it dripped onto the soil next to his boot, finally bleeding out into nothing as he pulled back and looked at her. Blood from his face had rubbed off here and there, giving her once menacing appearance a more scattered look as she smiled and twisted a lock of his hair.

"Let's get dinner ready."


End file.
